Leão
The young boy in the ponytail ignores you completely, as he sits stone-still and stares off into the distance. If you get any closer, he just walks away. Leão Rogaceu is the fourteen-year-old son of Alejandra and Ballantino, and the twin brother of Noemia. Leão is a quiet and very serious youth, and he often avoids contact with strangers. He is still fixated on seeking vengeance for the death of his older brother, and attempted to pay Jura with his mother's money to kill the one responsible. He briefly stole the musket given to Alejandra by Colonel Boyd before the start of the Battle of Willowdale. Alejandra believes his intention was to learn to use it before the battle so that he could participate. However, his lone-wolf attitude kept him from simply asking one of the trained gunmen for help, and he was unable to develop even a basic understanding of the weapon on his own. Alejandra took the gun back the day before the battle, admonishing her son for wasting time and telling him to leave with his sister for safer ground. Alejandra has shown concern for her son's change in attitude since the death of his brother, and is especially troubled at the fact that her sacred powers can detect evil growing in his heart. She tries to speak with him regularly, but is treated as being very distant in return, as though the two are complete strangers. In the Dead Nation's final attack on Willowdale, Leão was captured and subsequently consumed by the Necromancer. His body was recovered using Kat's genie lamp on Jura's request, and he was then raised from the dead. Leão initially was reluctant to return to life while his brother Julio remained dead. However, entreaty from his family and particularly his sister convinced him to accept the resurrection. Interactions with Pathfinders Leão mostly keeps to himself in a corner of the Boar and Thistle, paradoxically wanting to remain alone yet aware of the presence of other people. Most Pathfinders who try to speak to him may manage to get one or two sentences out of him before he simply leaves, while in other cases he refuses to respond outright. Jura has so far had the most luck speaking with him. In an early conversation, he revealed that his belief is that murderers should die, and asked Jura why Alejandra does not seem to understand this. Later on, he would speak of his sister to Jura, and rather casually mentioned that her cheerful demeanour was a lie used to mask her sadness, and that she was every bit as twisted by tragedy as the rest of the Rogaceu family. When Jura asked him to explain what the truth was if everyone was only affected by lies, he responded that the truth died with his brother. Ballantino later explained that his son's abrasiveness is part of how he copes with not only the loss of a family member, but also allows him to keep others at arm's length so that he cannot feel a similar loss a second time. Jura has also seen him writing single-mindedly in a book that he claimed would have "all the answers" when he was finished with it. At that time, he also warned Jura that if she wronged his sister Noemia, she would have to answer to him. When learning that Noemia would eventually depart on a journey with Jura to complete her druid training, he told Jura outright that he had no intention of entrusting the safety of his sister to her, and demanded to go along on the journey as well for his sister's sake. Jura told him that though she understood his concerns, it would not be possible for him to come. At this he dropped the conversation, claiming that there was nothing further for them to discuss. Some time later, Jura sought him out to share a memory demonstrating her protective instincts towards Noemia and tried to explain that though he is right to watch out for his sister, intentional harm should not be his concern. Leão in return showed her Julio's leave-taking from his family, when Julio instructed his younger brother, as "the smart one", to look after Noemia. Leão then said that he hadn't seen Vargas coming, but that he was now making a close study of what could cause a seemingly trustworthy person to turn bad. He asked Jura whether she thought that anything was left of Vargas within the Cinder Man, and posed the question of what sparked that particular fire. True to his promise, Leão snuck along on Noemia's vision quest with a little help from his sister, despite Jura's warnings that doing so could disrupt the ritual and put him or the participants at risk. By staying a fair distance from the party and using magical assistance he managed to remain unnoticed for several days, revealing himself only when Noemia had an attack of anxiety in response to Peyote and ran into the forest looking for her brother. At this Leão drew his gun on Jura and insisted that he and his sister were leaving. However, entreaties from both Jura and Noemia convinced him to instead return to the camp with them. Jura there suggested to Alejandra that Leão would be unlikely to disrupt the ritual in the form of an animal, and Leão announced that he would rather be transformed into the smallest crawling insect than leave his sister in the forest, so Jura transformed him into a hunting dog. He remained in this form for the remainder of his sister's vision quest. On his return from the woods, Leão said that even if Noemia wasn't in physical danger, he was bound to lose her just the same. Noemia insisted that she could be both a druid and a Rogaceu, and Jura pointed out that her actions in the vision quest clearly indicated that Noemia would choose him over her druidic vows if he demanded it of her. Noemia mentioned Vargas, and Leão asked how he could be sure that the primal forces he had witnessed in the vision quest weren't going to consume his sister as the Cinder Man had consumed Vargas. At this Jura described the totems as parental figures that assisted you and sometimes required your assistance, but did not ultimately control your identity or full destiny. With some further discussion Leão admitted that a part of him did trust that Jura did not intend to harm Noemia, and asked that he only be allowed to continue to stand at her side, which he indicated he would do even if it meant dying for her. He continues to call Jura "foolish mestre of my sister." Enrique briefly trained the boy in gun usage, which he took to with an evident, if quiet, passion. Leão has asked Enrique about his thoughts on the execution of murderers, with Enrique mentioning that it is not so black and white as Leão seems to think it is. Leão was notably disgusted with that response, and said nothing further. Enrique would later try to scare the youth by throwing him to the ground and sticking his pistol in Leão's mouth, asking the boy if he was really so callous as to visit this type of treatment onto a human being. Leão, unfazed, simply responded that it was hardly the worst thing one could do to another person, and Enrique thereafter stopped training the Rogaceu son. His father gave him a hand-crafted telescope for Yule, one in which he seems completely uninterested. Jura gave him a box of chocolates, from which he has eaten at least one piece. Titles *Dead Man Walking Category:Willowdale Category:Follower